I have taken the following article from abc news and appreciate them allowing me to use it. I think it is a disgrace that as hard as Americans have pushed anti-hate crimes in schools and bullying is on its way out, that adults are allowed to act like 3 year old toddlers. When it is there child that ends up gay, and beaten, left laying in the street to die one day they will have wished they would have remembered that one part of the bible. The part where we are suppose to love and forgive all. I don’t stand up with signs saying dear God Keep Scouts Morally Gay. It is wrong. We must have equality in this country. What happens when the little boy holding the sign is really gay and now will live his entire life afraid to tell the selfish mother beside him because it isn’t condoned or allowed. Well guess what mommy he’s going to be gay no matter what you do. All you have done now is caused your child to live a miserable life in the closet. He will probably kill himself before he is 18 because he doesn’t feel accepted. Go you Holy Rolling Proclaimed Christians —Put your children in there graves one by one now because that is where they will be if they were born gay as I was. It wasn’t a choice it was how God made me. No matter how hard I tried not to be, I still was. Shame on all of you for messing your children up from such a young age. It will not be there choice, but Karma is a bitch. It is one that will rare its head and bite you hard, so watch out. It was not your place to cast judgement, yet you have. It isn’t my place either but because of your ignorance I have felt the necessity to express myself in a less than professional manner. Please when your son is gay post it really big for us all to look at one day, I’m sure now by the time you know he is gay, he will be hanging from a rafter or the shower in your house dead. You will have a letter that reads, Dear Mom and Dad, Because you were bigots all my life I have lived confused because there was no other way for me. Since I just didn’t know what to do because you have told me daily that being gay is wrong and against Gods will I didn’t know what to do so I killed myself and it is all your fault. Yours and yours alone, well you can add the preacher that preached hate on Sunday mornings as well. God loved me too…… Your dead child. (Hope you get the picture Mom. Was saving the Scouts so important you sacrificed your child?)

A number of churches that previously sponsored Boy Scout troops have said they plan to sever ties to the organization following its decision to lift a longtime national ban on admitting openly gay Scouts. Openly gay adults will still be barred from leadership roles in the organization.

“I think I can say with pretty strong accuracy that the vast majority of Southern Baptists are very disappointed in the latest change in policy … deeply disappointed,” Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, told ABCNews.com.

Page said that the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant denomination in the United States — would be holding its national meeting in two weeks, after which it would likely recommend that its 47,000 U.S. churches pull away from the Boy Scouts of America. From there, it is up to each individual church to decide what to do, said Page.

About 70 percent of all local Boy Scout troops are supported by religious groups, according to the Boy Scouts of America, and the Southern Baptist Convention currently sponsors “hundreds of troops, probably thousands,” Page said.

“We don’t hate people,” said Page. “We don’t hate anybody, but we just felt like there’s got to be some objective standard, and we felt they were maintaining that until recently.”

The Mormon church, which sponsors most of the troops, has endorsed allowing gay Scouts. The Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest troop sponsor, has said it was going to use the time before the new policy takes effect on Jan. 1 to think about how and if it would affect the church.

The National Jewish Committee on Scouting, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Church all urged full repeal of the longtime ban.

But many other Christian groups continue to protest, citing religious freedom and the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave the Boy Scouts the constitutional right to keep out gay members.

The Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., which has about 300 families who participate in Scouting, also announced its plan to break its Boy Scout ties.

“Truly, for us it’s a logical decision,” Tim Hester, the church’s executive pastor, told the Courier-Journalnewspaper. “We cannot be distracted from the mission God has called us to.”

Last week’s decision to lift the ban was a “catalyst” in breaking away from the Boy Scouts but was not the church’s only reason for doing so, Hester said, citing directional differences between the organization and the church.

“We want everyone, including ourselves, to live by biblical standards,” Hester told the newspaper.

Hester did not immediately respond to ABCNews.com’s request for comment.

One of the first religious organizations to denounce the Boy Scout’s new policy on allowing gay members was the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal group, saying in a statement, “We believe that the BSA policy change will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program, as Assemblies of God and many other churches can no longer support groups that are part of an organization allowing members who are openly homosexual.”

Page, of the Southern Baptist Convention, echoed that sentiment. “I warned Scouting executives that this would happen, and they supposedly realized it would happen, but they thought they would gain more,” Page said. “I assured them that if your goal is to minister to the largest number of youth, those were their words, then changing this is going to be a detriment to your goal.”

The Boy Scouts said in a statement that it respected the “deeply held” religious beliefs of its members but encouraged them to read the resolution about the new policy. “We believe this policy is reflective of the beliefs of most of Scouting’s major religious chartered organizations and are unaware of any that believe a youth member simply stating he or she is attracted to the same sex, but not engaging in sexual activity, should make him or her unwelcome in their congregation. While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting.”

Gay rights advocates believe the Boy Scouts’ new policy may actually attract new organizations and members who may have been put off by its former practices.”There’s a lot of noise around folks that are leaving, and there’s probably not going to be as much attention about what new troops may actually start or get sponsored by places that didn’t want to be associated with the discriminatory policy before,” Ross Murray, director of news and faith initiatives for GLAAD, a gay rights advocacy group, told ABCNews.com.

“My prediction is that there will be a small percentage that leaves, like less than 5 percent, but there will be a lot of noise around them leaving and a lot of words like ‘torn apart’ will be used to describe this, but, in the end, the organization will probably come back in a stronger place because it’s more inclusive,” he said.

Soccer player Robbie Rogers came out of a short-lived retirement today to join the Los Angeles Galaxy, becoming the first openly gay player in Major League Soccer.

The 26-year-old midfielder, who briefly walked away from the sport in February after coming out in a letter he posted online, said he was “excited” to return to the game.

“It doesn’t matter that I’m gay or where I’m from,” he said at a news conference today.

Rogers, who played on the United States national team and was a professional soccer player in England, said he had received support from family, fans and players, including Galaxy star Landon Donovan.

“I know I’m very motivated and I want to be better than I was before,” he said. “I want to prove to everyone in this room and everyone in this world that I’m a great footballer, a great soccer player.

“It doesn’t matter that I’m gay,” he said. ” That’s not important.”

Rogers’ return to the game comes on the heels of NBA center Jason Collins becoming the first openly gay men’s professional basketball player.

In a recent interview with “Nightline,” Rogers said he hid his sexuality all his life so he could fit in with the “macho, macho man” world of soccer.

“Because it’s sports. It’s the stereotype that you’re supposed to be this manly guy that is making tackles. It’s beating up on other guys,” he said, while he was still contemplating a return to professional soccer.

“Gay athletes are athletes,” he said in the “Nightline” interview. “If I go back to soccer, I want to go back as Robbie. I just want it to be as simple as that.”

“We couldn’t allow ourselves to be emotional on the stand,” jury foreman William Zervakos said today on “Good Morning America.” “We couldn’t allow ourselves to show emotion [but] it was a different story when we got back into the jury room.”

Arias pled for her life also during the sentencing phase of the trial, but Zervakos says her long stint on the stand didn’t help her case, especially when she was cross-examined by the prosecutor.

“I think 18 days hurt her. I think she was not a good witness…I think the way the prosecutor was with her, he’s known for an aggressive style. I think it’d be difficult for anybody,” Zervakos said. “I don’t think I want to sit on the stand for 18 days.

“We’re charged with going in presuming innocence, right, but she was on the stand for so long. I don’t think it did her any good,” Zervakos added. “There were so many contradicting stories.”

Arias had been branded a liar by the prosecution because she initially denied killing Alexander, then claimed two years later that she killed him in self-defense, citing Alexander’s physical and emotional abuse.

Zervakos, for one, believed Arias’ story that she was abused in the relationship, but not that she killed Alexander in self-defense.

“I’m very sure in my own mind that she was mentally and verbally abused,” he said. “Now is that an excuse? Of course not. Does it factor into the decisions that we make? It has to.”

Arias’ appearance – from her blonde bombshell look while she was dating Alexander, to the more subdued look she presented in the courtroom with glasses, bangs and dark hair – that captivated the media and the public throughout the trial, seemed to captivate the jurors inside the courtroom as well.

“When I looked in the courtroom for the first time and looked who the defendant was, it’s hard to put that in perspective when you look at a young woman and think of the crime and then think of the brutality of the crime,” Zervakos said. “It just doesn’t wash so it’s very difficult to divest yourself from the personal, from the emotional part of it.”

After the jury’s hung verdict was read Thursday, leaving the case still open, one juror mouthed, “I’m so sorry,” toward Alexander’s family and prosecutors.

Zervakos says he and other jurors struggled greatly with seeing Alexander’s family every day in the courtroom.

“Until you’re face-to-face with people that have gone through something like that, it’s something you really can’t put into words,” he said on “GMA.” “I’m six feet away from somebody talking about a horrendous loss. If you can’t feel that, then you have no emotion, no soul.”

Arias’ fate is now left up to the prosecutor, who will decide whether to retry the penalty phase. If he decides to try again for the death penalty, a new jury will be selected and both the prosecution and defense will present evidence and arguments over what sentence Arias should receive.

The retrial, in which Arias can either be sentenced to death or to life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole, would begin July 18.